Weekly Newsletter: January 13th-19th, 2025

This week, we checked out several local restaurants, Keith performed more bike maintenance, and we skied during some of the coldest weather this season. 🥶

Check out our new posts and videos 🆕 🎥 📝

Lodging on the Camino: From Hostels to Hotels

Keith and I enjoyed the various and inexpensive options for lodging along the Camino de Santiago. Each night was a little different and offered different amenities.

Keith and LindseyLindsey Huster

More bike maintenance 🚲🔧

Keith has been continuing to work through his bike maintenance list. This week, he replaced his worn chain with a brand new SRAM Eagle X01 chain. It's important to replace a chain before it "stretches" too much. Chains don't actually "stretch" but rollers inside the chain do wear which leads to a poor fit between the chain links and the cassette/chainring teeth. Continuing to ride on a worn chain can result in premature wear of the expensive cassette and chainring components so its important to stay on top of this with a proper chain checker tool.

Date night at K's Kitchen 🍛 🥟

For date night this week, we headed to Provo, UT to check out K's Japanese Kitchen. This local Japanese restaurant receives seriously high remarks on Google Reviews so we knew we had to try it. The restaurant is no-frills yet very welcoming. It is located in the heart of the Provo Center Street district which makes it a nice dinner destination while walking through the town.

To kick off our meal, we ordered the Gyoza appetizer. We also each ordered the Yakiniku Donburi Bowl (Korean BBQ beef over rice) for our main meal. The Gyoza was handmade and delicious; definitely a great way to start the meal. The Yakiniku looked very simple when it arrived at our table. However, its looks were definitely deceiving. The meat was incredibly flavorful and the sauce mixed well with the white rice. This made for a scrumptious bite throughout the entire meal. 😋

Overall, our meal was fantastic! We are definitely looking forward to visiting this restaurant again. The real question is what do we order next time? Do we stick with the delicious Yakiniku or do we branch out and try something different? 🤔

Post-dinner dessert 🧁 🇫🇷

After our delicious dinner at K's Japanese Kitchen, we decided to walk down to Bianca's La Petite French Bakery & Cafe. This cute French bakery offers a wide variety of delicious and beautiful desserts. This was our first visit so the vast array of choices was overwhelming.

Eventually, Lindsey settled on a slice of carrot cake and Keith ordered a Bavarian cream-filled Kro-Nut (pastry that's a cross between a croissant and a donut) along with a scoop of chocolate ice cream. Lindsey enjoyed her carrot cake while Keith ate his ice cream. Since we were both fairly full, we decided to take the Kro-Nut home to share the next morning.

A warm and inviting lunch spot 🧀 🍲

The temps have seriously dipped in Utah! 🥶 We have been looking for a reason to visit one of our old favorite restaurants in Pleasant Grove, UT; Craving's Bistro. This local restaurant serves up amazing grilled cheese sandwiches along with a delectable, house-made tomato soup that is incredibly flavorful. The cold temperatures were the perfect excuse to visit this old favorite of ours.

Lindsey ordered the Ultimate BLT and Keith ordered the Jan-BBQ Buckaroo with a parmesan crust. We each also ordered the tomato soup along with our sandwiches. This was definitely the right meal to help us warm up from the cold outside. 😋

A cold weekend of skiing 🥶 🎿

The Martin Luther King Jr. holiday fell over this weekend. This is known as a popular ski weekend for locals and travelers alike. However, with the introduction of the mega-ski passes such as the Ikon Pass, blackout dates have resulted in fewer tourists visiting our local resorts during holidays such as this.

Our mountains had recently received snowfall and the cold temps keep the snow in good condition. To avoid missing out on this, we headed to Snowbird very early. So early in fact, that we beat nearly all of the traffic up the canyon and arrived before daylight! 😴 This meant that we had nearly two hours to wait in the Creekside Lodge before the lifts would start spinning.

Eventually, we hit the slopes and were greeted with excellent skiing conditions everywhere we looked. The groomers had a nice layer of soft snow on top which made carving a breeze. The off-piste runs had a few inches of fresh snow on top of the leftover powder which made for some fantastic turns on the steeper runs.

The biggest issue of the day was the severely cold weather. 🥶 Air temps at the base were around 5°F to 10°F (-15°C to -12°C). We spent most of the morning lapping the lower elevations runs to avoid the high winds at the upper elevations. We eventually made one lap from near the summit and man was it a brutal one! By the time we got down, we were all shivering. Lindsey's nose even turned bright white!!! We knew it was time to head in and warm up. We eventually just decided to call it a day since it was already nearly 1:00 PM.

Upcoming posts and videos 👷‍ 👷‍♀️️

Lindsey has recently wrapped up a series of posts on our Quick Trip to New York City. If you haven't seen that yet, you should check it out. Lindsey is also working on the post series from our three-week adventure along the Camino De Santiago, Portuguese Route! Those posts are being published as she has time. We also have several prior trips that we haven't yet shared, so be sure to subscribe to our blog if you haven't done so already.

We hope that you are enjoying our newsletters. Winter is in full swing, how are you spending your winter season? Let us know in the comments section below.👇 💬